Have you ever taken a flight from Beijing Daxing International Airport (BDIA)? After opening on Sept.25, BDIA drew attention not just for its design, but also for its many high-tech facilities (设施) and services.
The new airport, seated in the southernmost part of Beijing is made up of a main terminal (航站楼), a supporting service building and a parking lot. Together, they cover an area of about 1.4 million square meters, which is equal to(等同于) 63 Tian'anmen Square, according to Beijing Review.
The new airport is expected to handle 45 million passenger trips a year by 2022 and 72 million by 2025, China Daily reported. With more runways (飞机跑道) planned, the new airport will eventually handle more than 100 million passengers each year. That's around the total population of the UK and Canada combined.
The airport has many new technologies that make it smarter and more efficient (有效率的). It is the world's first airport with a double-deck departure and arrival (双进双出) design for its terminal building. "It's more efficient for passengers than any other larger airport terminal of the same size in the world," Guo Yanchi, the chief engineer in charge of (主管) construction (建造), told China Daily.
According to the civil Aviation Administration of China, 86 percent of check-ins can be done through self-service check-in kiosks (自助值机一体机) and 76 percent of luggage can be checked automatically (自动地) with the help of self-service bag-drop machines. Other technologies, such as a facial recognition system(人脸识别系统), allow passengers to have a quicker check-in and boarding process.
The airport will also use a robot-operated (机器人操作的) parking system. Drivers just need to park their cars in given areas. Robots will then carry them to an empty space. When collecting their cars, drivers simply need to scan (扫描) a parking ticket to find out where to collect their cars.
